Connecting War and Genocide

Connecting War and Genocide Christopher P. Davey International Relations Insights & Analysis Peace and Conflict Analysis Genocide physical destruction, with planned elimination of a Definitions of genocide have been produced by group’s rights, integrity and life. Groups may even be lawyers, scholars, politicians and victims. Debates forcibly re-identified as another group, resulting in about these definitions manifest in tension over the similar destructive outcome. broad and narrow conceptions of genocide. For instance, the UN Convention for the Prevention and Following the establishment of the United Nations in Punishment of the Crime of Genocide narrows target 1945, and the uncovering of Nazi crimes during the groups to those with ethnic, religious, racial, national war, Lemkin lobbied incessantly for the international, identity. The term is also used more broadly as a judicial recognition of genocide. Although, “genocide” rhetorical device by news media and activists in order was not a major feature of the Nuremberg trials, the to mobilize popular opinion. The simplest definition logic of prosecuting Nazi war crimes under the rubric of genocide is that it is the intended destruction of of the mass destruction of civilians was pervasive specific groups. Despite definitional debates, this throughout the trials and sentencing. Government type of destructive action has been part of human representatives at the UN entered into negotiations history as long as warfare itself, however, the two are of a treaty that defined and outlawed the crime. The not necessarily synonymous. Whilst war can occur first round of negotiations produced a document without genocide, genocide rarely occurs without war, that explicitly acknowledged the multiple aspects of yet, this is not a strictly cause and effect relationship. Lemkin’s “genocide”: cultural, physical, and biological This explorative article will address social and legal destruction, the latter referring to the removal approaches to genocide, some historic intersections of children from a group and the reproductive of war and genocide, the problematic nature of sterilization of members of the group. The final treaty intent and ideology, humanitarian warfare aimed at accepted by the General Assembly in 1948, excluded preventing genocide, and historic and contemporary cultural destruction and the targeting of political issues of resources and climate in war and genocide. groups. Genocide was also acknowledged as a crime that could occur in both times of war and peace. A Social or Legal Phenomenon? The term “genocide” itself originates with a single Even though Lemkin’s law had finally been author, Raphael Lemkin. Prior to Lemkin’s naming of established, it saw little exercise in the coming this phenomena, it has littered recorded history. Both decades. The term itself was subject to Cold War the Bible and Quran document divinely mandated rhetoric and political debates, while under the cover mass slaughter of noncombatants. Greek and Roman of US and USSR interests internationally, violence traditions also describe the destruction of Troy against specific groups, labelled as ideological and Carthage. Yet, what makes genocide a unique enemies, was encouraged and permitted in contexts phenomenon was the purposefully labelling by a of decolonization and independence. Most notably contemporary observer of twentieth century warfare. in Latin America, genocides have been documented It was this history that captured Lemkin, as seen in his in Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Guatemala. The later writings on genocide throughout human history. latter case continues to be legally contested into the 2010s and also involved US training of military forces Reviewing photographic evidence and eyewitness in tactics of torture and violence against civilians. The accounts of the destruction of Armenians in the People’s Republic of China also engaged in civilian waning Ottoman Empire, Lemkin, a Polish jurist in group destruction and forced famine at a massive scale the 1930s pushed for international law to prohibit this during Mao’s “Great Leap Forward” and “Cultural level of destruction, banning attacks on a national Revolution”. These internal Cold War conflicts that group’s physical and cultural integrity. Unsuccessful, reached genocidal proportions were fostered, or went but determined, Lemkin escaped Poland after its defeat unquestioned, during geopolitical bi-polar rivalry. by Nazi Germany and fled to the USA. There he took up work in the early 1940s describing the process of It was not until after the Cold War that the UN destruction underway in Eastern Europe. Termed as Convention on Genocide was used in prosecuting and genocide, or literally race-killing, Lemkin articulated attempts at preventing genocide. The 1990s saw mass a process by which a group is subjected to a range of destruction as simultaneously broadcasted across the processes and outcomes, including both cultural and satellite TV connected world and devoid of Cold War 3 International Relations Insights & Analysis Peace and Conflict Analysis divisions that in the past had protected genocidaires. Historical Cases of Genocide and War The International Tribunals for both Yugoslavia and Genocide occurs following warfare, in the context Rwanda ushered in the significance of international of, or during warfare, and sometimes within a criminal law, and judgements that utilized Lemkin’s social or political “war” or campaign that becomes first framing of genocide. In some cases such courts violent on a massive scale. The following examples, are burdened with defining atrocities as genocide or grouped by type, demonstrate these intersections not. Significantly, these ad-hoc tribunals established of war and genocide. These also utilize the varied case law for rape as a weapon of war in the context aspects of violence (structural, direct and cultural) of genocide. This highlighted issues of gender in as described by scholars such as Johan Galtung. genocide, not only raising the question of whether or The genocide of Tutsis, moderate Hutus and Twa not genocide is particularly more lethal for men or peoples in 1994 Rwanda, erupted following a peace women, but also how genocide might be experienced agreement pausing a violent civil war in the north. differently based on gender. It was the case against With the Rwandan Armed Forces, militias and the Jean-Paul Akayesu, mayor of the Taba Commune Rwandan Patriotic Front still mobilized and arming during the 1994 Rwandan genocide, which heralded themselves, violence very easily rolled into successive the first genocide conviction. Rape, as a weapon, was wars starting with the “War of Liberation” in 1996 framed in the prosecution and conviction of Akayesu Zaire. Further retaliatory massacres and genocides as an integral part of genocide in this local context. continued against both Hutus and Tutsis of Rwandan, Burundian and Congolese origin. Indigenous peoples, The 2002 establishment of the International Criminal in the expansion of colonial Europe, were subject to Court and the Rome Statute, whilst having its roots in violent warfare, and campaigns of social or cultural the post-World War II international justice movement, destruction. From opposite ends of the Western stemmed from a global campaign during this 1990s colonial world, Tolowas in 1890s California and era of international jurisdiction and prosecution. The Tasmanians in early 1800s Van Diemen’s Land were Rome Statute articulates verbatim the UN Convention exposed to settler violence, programs of resettlement on Genocide, entrenching crimes against humanity, and re-education, extinguishing the cultural and war crimes, and crimes of aggression into the court’s physical life of these groups. Practices of warfare and jurisdiction. Cases taken on by the Court include military cultures have also influenced the scale of those in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, destruction. In German South-West Africa Herero Sudan, Côte d’Ivoire, Libya, Central African Republic, and Nama peoples were hunted down and herded into and Uganda. Of note was the warrant for the arrest of the Omaheke desert as part of German annihilationist Omar al-Bashir, as the first sitting head of state charged military tactics forged in past colonial and European with genocide during counter-insurgency warfare wars. First Nations’ children in Canada were also in Darfur. While the court makes no specialized targeted in social warfare that aimed to destroy the connection between war and genocide, many of the Indian and enforce western, white values, education cases tacitly acknowledge the prevalent context of war and culture. Regardless of how these two phenomena for acts of genocide, or the role of military leaders and collide, it is when they do that the scope and magnitude former heads of state involved in wars that commit of destruction is catalysed into a level of violence that genocide. destroys groups of human beings. Given the variety of outcomes for the legal prosecution Genocide is also produced by wars of independence of genocide, and the deep, contextual connection to and wars of state crisis. The wars of the 1990s break-up war, many academic and sociological perspectives of of Yugoslavia, saw mass scale destruction of cultural genocide have run the gamut of amending Lemkin’s and physical life from the burning of libraries, heritage law to a broader definition, reminiscent of the first sites and museums, to the use of rape as a weapon of committee draft, to separating

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